Laundry Blues
by EK
Summary: Exactly what does "Out of My League" by Stephen Speaks, have to do with LAUNDRY?! Just click please and find out. (One-shot)


Hello everybody! This is one of the many fans of Stephen Speaks, back with another songfic.  ^^  Hope you like.  It is rather dead obvious who's talking.   ^_^   I am beginning to miss him terribly, after writing White and Black for two months.   

"Out of My League" by Stephen Speaks.  

………………………

            Everyone seems to wonder what I find so intriguing about doing the laundry. At least, why I keep doing it. It is not required of me, I know, as a man—but I do want to do something I know I am capable of doing, in exchange for her many kindnesses to me.  

            But prior to living with her, laundry was something I detested. They all told me, in all the many places I served for money, that I was too small and too short to do anything else. I was always either made to do the dishes, cook, or wash clothes. Other wayfarers were asked to deliver goods, sell things, help paint houses. They were muscular men, definitely capable of doing the job. Not I.  

            So it was when I first met her, and lived at her dojo. However, by then I had gotten so used to being placed on laundry duty that it was like second nature. I gravitated to the piles of linen demanding to be washed. I found myself looking for a washboard and some soap, and attacking the laundry for all I was worth.   Well, she appreciated the gesture, and, without speaking a word, I somehow knew I was getting this chore for as long as I stayed with her.  

            I am not complaining. 

            Doing the laundry has its many redeeming properties, you know. I could actually go on and say how it makes me feel to wash away dirt and grime from cloth—the way I would want to be cleansed from my guilt.  But not today.  

            One of the best things about the afternoon laundry is the chance to see her from the front porch, returning from teaching kendo in some school nearby. She enters, whistling happily, her wooden sword slung at her back, uncaring that I am watching her from a tall stack of soap suds. 

It's her hair and her eyes today

That just simply takes me away

And the feeling that I'm falling 

Further in love makes me shiver

But in a good way

            Oh, yes, I know that I love her………I think I have known it since her life was threatened the first time. I would not have anyone on earth, heaven, or hell touch her and take her from me.  Every time I see her flip her long ponytail away to her back, every time I see her grin sheepishly at me, every time I see her worried eyes, I relive that promise to myself. 

The problem is, I do not know exactly how to say it.  

So, I continue to gaze at her from behind my washboard, my soapy arms immersed to my elbow in water, suds in my messy hair. I continue to admire her grace behind the boyish ways, her beauty behind the tousled dark locks.  I watch her as she practices with her only real student, smiling with such ease and moving with such style.   I watch her silently, afraid of breaking the spell she has on me, afraid of saying the wrong word.   

All the times I have sat and stared

As she thoughtfully thumbs through her hair

And she purses her lips, bats her eyes

As she plays, with me sitting there slack-jawed

And nothing to say

But I love her with all that I am

And my voice shakes along with my hands

Cause I'm speechless to say what I'm feeling today

But I'm out of my league once again

            Who am I to have this woman for myself? Oh, sure, she told me that she welcomed the me right now, and not my past self. But surely that part of me is always at the back of her mind, and it will always keep her from wanting to be with me forever.  

            The soap bubbles hide my hands shaking in nervousness as she comes closer. What have I done wrong again? Maybe it is not something I did, but something I have not done yet. 

It is not possible that she appreciates me, that she likes me……that she ……..loves me?      

"What are you looking at, Kenshin?" she asks with a grin, and waves a hand across my eyes. I return to reality, that this bedsheet should have been done ten minutes ago. Oro. I scratch my head at her with embarrassment   

I take solace again in the laundry before me, and I try to scrub away my feelings of insecurity and doubt. The bubbles float by before my face, and as they pop, a small fear pops away with it. As I throw away the dirty water, my nervous thoughts are thrown away, too.   

I finish with the washing, and I make my way to the bamboo poles where I hang the sheets. I welcome the lovely breeze blowing through the afternoon sky, making the day cooler and the clothes dry faster.  I look behind me, and I see her jet-black ponytailed hair blowing in the wind. She laughs goodnaturedly at me hanging the laundry and at her student practicing his strokes. 

Ah, and she called me by name. It is not exactly the name I was born with, but it is too late now to be called by any other.  And why change it? It suits her to call me so.  She gives a ring and a song to it that no one else ever could.  

It's a masterful melody

When she calls out my name to me

As the world spins around her 

She laughs, rolls her eyes

And I feel like I'm falling but it's no surprise

That I love her with all that I am

And my voice shakes along with my hands

Cause it's frightening to be

Swimming in a strange sea

But I'd rather be here than on land

And she's all that I see

And she's all that I need

And I'm out of my league once again

            She has no idea of the effect she has on me.  How much fear she strikes into my soul, every time she comes this close to me, her beautiful blue eyes looking through my violet ones, her handsome face smiling at my panicking one. 

            She cocks her pretty head at me, looking at her from the front porch. "Something wrong, Kenshin?" 

            "Oh, oh, no, nothing is wrong, Kaoru-dono." 

            "Alright." 

            "Ah, anou……Kaoru-dono……" 

            "Hm?" 

            I take a deep breath. I stand up and wring my water-wrinkled hands. As that does not help my trepidation, I simply hide my arms behind my back.   

            "The sun is coming down so beautifully……..would Kaoru-dono want to see it by the lake……with me?" 

            I heave a sigh of relief. I was actually able to say it. All that remains to be known is if she will…….she will………..

            "I would like that very much, Kenshin."    

It is days like this that makes doing laundry for her, a bit of heaven on earth.   

……………….

I did not use "sessha", so it would look and feel smoother. And his respectfulness can also be shown in other ways.  Thank you for reading this one-shot! 


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